This is too good to be true. Can anyone enlighten me as to how 150W TDP graphics card can be passively cooled without a gigantic heatsink? The heatsink does not look impressive. I have tinkered with a number of aftermarket GPU coolers and my rule of thumb is that the maximum TDP that can be passively dissipated is about 80W-100W. What makes it possible for AMD achieve what Nvidia hasn't done ever?

I'd consider about 130W TDP to be the max limit when you use a ~500RPM fan (fixed to that speed) blowing across the card (not actually mounted to the GPU heatsink), and you don't mind GPU temps going up to about 80~90 degrees C in games (and up to 90~100 degrees in Furmark). The reason for keeping the case fan vertical, is to avoid unwanted noises from the sleeve bearing fan that can pop up over time when placed horizontally. And you use a sleeve bearing fan to avoid any trace of motor noise at this low RPM's compared to otherwise better quality bearing types.

Yeah, I was real anal back then...

For a genuinely passively cooled card, I'd stick with ggumdol's recommendation of 80~100W, or even lower to keep the GPU temp well short of 100 degrees C. Perhaps something like the 55W figure of the HD7750, coupled with an Accelero S1?

I suppose it depends on where you set the FPS/resolution bar. A 7750 Ultimate is somehow "easy" as a fanless GPU solution compared to the 7850/R9 270 SCS3 model, but performances aren't quite the same.

I don't have that many games that can't run on a 7750, but the gaming experience it starting to show deal-breaker limits (at least for me) on games like Tomb Raider, Splinter Cell Blacklist, DayZ... and probably more to come in 2014. Since the R9 270 should have more or less the performances of a 660, it should hold up much longer - if not burnt after a year

I will probably buy this R9 270 and give it a try, worst case scenario I'll stick on low RPM fan right on it.

I quite like your fan placement flemeister, may I ask the Scythe reference you're using?By the way, did you stop going fanless GPU?

Yeah, I stopped doing that after discovering that good custom coolers such as Gigabyte Windforce / Asus DCUII etc. could be very quiet and allow me to choose whatever performance level I wanted, rather than being limited to a mid-range card, or at best, a pair of passive cards like with 2x HD5770's (just about HD5870 performance, a high-end card in 2010).

Currently running a Gigabyte GTX670 OC (Windforce 3 cooler -- 3x 80mm fans), with fan speeds of 750RPM at idle (with GPU temp just below 40 degrees C), 1150RPM in games (GPU usually tops out at 70 degrees C in TF2), and a max allowed speed of 2500RPM (never gets that high anyway). The GPU fans sound smooth and benign as well, and this is even more impressive as I'm using a Silverstone SG07 case (m-ITX) on top of my desk, 0.6m from my noogin. My old P182 was under my desk, had a more closed up design than the SG07, and had Acoustipack added to it's already tank-like construction.

I'm actually impressed by the RPM of those Gigabyte fans, I thought Asus and Gigabyte had them running around 1,000 on idle. It doesn't seem to be the case on all Windforce model though, I read that that the Gigabyte WF R9 270 could only go as low as 1,370 rpm at 20%.

I'm also curious about the difference it makes, although we all have different homes and ears so I suppose I won't know if they could suit me before I try them out. My issue is that I wouldn't have ANY noise outside the graphic card (Superflower fanless PSU, SSD, low RPM Scythe...).

flemeister wrote:

Currently running a Gigabyte GTX670 OC (Windforce 3 cooler -- 3x 80mm fans), with fan speeds of 750RPM at idle (with GPU temp just below 40 degrees C), 1150RPM in games (GPU usually tops out at 70 degrees C in TF2), and a max allowed speed of 2500RPM (never gets that high anyway). The GPU fans sound smooth and benign as well, and this is even more impressive as I'm using a Silverstone SG07 case (m-ITX) on top of my desk, 0.6m from my noogin. My old P182 was under my desk, had a more closed up design than the SG07, and had Acoustipack added to it's already tank-like construction.

While it isn't running high, you must still notice a difference in sound volume coming from the PC, right? Especially since it's now sitting on the desk?

So thanks a lot for all the interest and discussion. I have the card here and up and running. However I had a lot of weird issues, which might be related to my system... but more bout that later. First some pictures of the card with some instructions for interested people (WHICH VOID YOUR WARRANTY, so I take no responsibility whatsoever if you decide to follow this route).

What I did was to remove the stupid stylish cover on top of the heat sink. It is basically glued to the sink and screwed down on the top side with two small screws. I removed the screws and then gently pryed the cover off using a flat screwdriver. It comes off relatively easily.

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Then I added the fan (Scythe Kaze-Jyu Slim: 100 x 100 x 12 mm, 1000 rpm) using zip ties. It turned out that even at full rpm it is inaudible in the case beneath my table. Originally I thought of adding a Zalman fan mate, but not so far.

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...continued in next post

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Finally, some fun with Furmark in the closed case (Two front fans between 300-550 rpm, one top fan and one back fan also around 300-550 rpm, cpu fan is acutally practically idle around 250 rpm). All fans are voltage controlled Scythe Slipstreams 120 x 120 mm.

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As visible card temperatures seem to stabilize around 70 °C, more than fine enough for me.

So now for the fun:

The system is a Intel DP67BG Mainboard (Intel P67) with PCIE 2.0, Sandy Bridge Core i5-2500, 8 GB RAM. The graphics card itself is a PCIE 3.0 variant obviously. OSes are Kubuntu 13.10 and Windows 7 in a dual boot system. Main Bootloader is Grub 2. The fun thing is, that with this card the Grub bootloader is not shown (DVI output). What I see is just a black screen with one of the last POST codes in the lower right (which is principally normal before entering the boot loader). Initially, I thought the system would hang, but after some wait time it automatically booted into Kubuntu, however it seemed I could not enter Windows, even when setting the default boot loader value to the Windows system. I am still not sure how I got it "working", but it turns out that it takes around 70 seconds till the bootloaders seem to decide that enough is enough and boots Windows (btw I also cannot see the windows boot manager). All of this is really weird, as the timeouts are 5, respectively 2 seconds for the two (invisible) boot-loaders. I actually think, that the system hangs within GRUB, but can obviously not prove this. What I know is that the grub bootloader is present 5 seconds after the last post code change, because you can make grub beep as I learned. I can also change entries blindly and boot into Kubuntu, but still have some weird delay also for this boot option.

So, that is basically it... question is: Incompatibility issues between (rather old) Mobo and card? What else? Any insight would be appreciated! I'd really like to SEE my bootloaders. After booting, everything seems fine however.

Cheers, Kobold

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I unfortunately can't answer your questions, but thanks a lot for the feedback.

Funny how I had planned to get a similar rig, at least for the graphic card, fans and CPU cooler (Scythe Mugen 4, right? Does it perform well sound-wise?).

I personnaly change my mind for an EVGA 750 Ti that I hope to mod passive (Accelero S1 Plus), mostly in order to keep the - great - EVGA warranty of at least 3 years, which I will probably turn into 5 or 10 years for futur resell.

It's great to see that the card can stay below 70°C with Furmark with a reasonable 1000 RPM. That means a low RPM fan should perfectly handle it while not gaming.

Are you sure removing the plastic thingy voided your warranty? Couldn't you just put back some glue and re-screw it?

Thanks for your input I learned about the Nvidia card a little to late... but I probably also wanted sth. a little more powerful. The Mugen 4 itself is rather perfect, if not overkill . I think the fan I attached is more there for cosmetic reasons. As mentioned somewhere above it is spinning so slowly, that I doubt it really adds much to the top and back-fans.

I would say in a pratical kind of sense you are right... it should be fairly easy to reattach the metal faceplate, mabye even without using new glue (the right kind could be important). Technically speaking I think a seller would still count this as voiding the warranty, as I "modified" the hardware.

I have just bought one of these and I am very impressed. As suggested have a low rpm fan blowing air onto the h/s. I am using a fan at 500rpm mounted off the heatsink on an L shaped bracket on the case rear to avoid vibration noise and it runs much cooler than my old Gigabyte 5750 silentcell in the same setup.

Don't forget it can be under-clocked and also have a 20% reduction is max power use using the amd control centre so you can generate less heat if you don't need the full gpu power depending on the games you play.

Just FYI for everyone. Apart from my abovementioned strange POSTing issues, the card runs otherwise fine without problems. I also contacted Powercolor support about this, but they could not resolve the issue. I still think it's probably an incompatibility issue with the mainboard. Ultimately, I was to lazy to contact Intel about it, as the board itself is rather old (DP67BG) and they would probably not investigate the issue just for me.

Apologies for resurrecting this post but I'm considering getting one of these and I can't find out how many 6 pin power connectors it requires.

The powercolor site lists it as requiring 1 but there are other mentioned elsewhere of it needing 2, the generic powercolor manual for the 270 range for example. I can't find any pictures of the back of the card to verify the correct number. Can anyone who has one tell me?

I'm also a little concerned about the power requirement. The powercolor site lists 500W as the requirement but I've read the threads here about true power requirements and I think I'll probably be ok. I've got a seasonic S12II 380 which from the reviews I've read has a solid 12v rail and should be ok. Any opinions on this? The psu does only have one 6 pin connector though hence my first question.

The R9 270 has a TDP of 150W. Don't know what your other components are, but let's assume a 95W CPU a couple of hard drives and mobo for another 50W. So, call it 300W stressed load and ~ 250W worst case gaming load. You should be fine with your PSU. Fan will be ramping up, though.

Just one. And I did remove that metal logo to. Setting this to level 1 speed on asrock 970 extreme 3 r2.0 mobo makes it run at around 650 rpm

Doing a few tests my self. Playing the game remember me. I was able to drop the temps from 83c to 58c. That's with game setup to highest setting possible. And with fan at slowest speed. The fan is plastic and mostly coated with rubber so that stops all vibrations and I only tied it up with them tie wrap things you get in a pack with food bags. Did the job for me. I can get the fan speed to about level 4 900 rpm and still not able to hear it. So it is a really good fan.

Another thing about fans on this card. It does have a mini 4 pin (pwm) fan connector on it. Which ain't bad considering it don't have a fan, at least powercolor thought about us people who want to stick a fan on it anyways.

I have just ordered of ebay a mini 4 pin female to normal 4 pwm pin male adaptor for £2.99. Free p&p.

So when that arrives i shall stick a 4 pin fan onto my card connected to that and using amd overdrive, set it to 20% fan speed (sound check) and do some tests to see what difference it makes,

I'm the type of gamer who likes quiet as possible computer but not bothered about noise when playing games as I got headphones on. So will also do some future mark tests with fan at 20% and also 100%.

Also after all this testing I'm gonna overclock to max in amd over drive. So from 925 to 1050. And what ever the others are to max. And again. 100% fan (think this will be neede for max overclock) and run future mark for an hour or so.

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